Cloud computing platforms, such as the OpenStack platform, are used as infrastructure for cloud computing service platforms. OpenStack, for example, aims to serve large scale systems that launch virtual machines in a massive fashion. In some cloud computing environment, customers start one or more images on a server cluster, with the cloud computing platform separating the processing, memory and computing resources for each started image so that the individual images act as if the image is operating on a separate computer server. The ability to sequester each running image prevents conflicts between images. To make the massive launch process more efficient, bottlenecks in the launch process of single virtual machines should be removed or minimized. When launching a virtual machine, a user should be able specify the files to be put into the image of the operating system before the virtual machine is booted.